Luminato: Bruce Mau's illuminating light

Photos of nothing. That’s the subject of Bruce Mau’s new Luminato exhibit, according to his daughters.

But you don’t become a world famous designer by presenting the photo installation of nothing. Instead, what Mau chose to photograph is something we take so for granted that we don’t even see it: light.

Looking Up: 100 Photos of Light is a 400-square-foot installation at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, but you need to be leaving the country to see it. The photos, printed on translucent paper, are being arrayed in a rectangular grid on the south-facing windows of the international departures area. Light illuminating light.

“[It’s] almost like a stained glass window,” says Mau, a few weeks before the installation is finished. “It’s unreal how subtle it is.”

An airport may sound like an unusual place for a celebration of public art, but with millions of people likely to go through the lounge during the run of the exhibit – which has yet to be determined – it’s as public a space as any in the city. More than that, though, the inspiration for the photos came to Mau during his travels.

The designer grew up on a farm outside of Sudbury before moving to Toronto to attend the Ontario College of Art and Design – “I’m one of the few designers who can put a pig in the freezer for you,” he jokes.

Mau left OCAD before graduating and worked at numerous design firms both in Canada and abroad before starting his own firm, Bruce Mau Designs, in Toronto, although he is now based in Chicago. He’s a busy man and is in demand all over the world.

“[The project] first started because I was flying a lot,” he says. “Coming in and out of the clouds is such a beautiful experience.”

One of Mau’s first jobs was as a hockey and wedding photographer in Sudbury as a teenager. He hadn’t really kept up with it, though, and said his first photos of light were taken with his cell phone camera. His wife put a stop to that when she gave him a Canon 5D, which he used to take all the photos included in the exhibit.

One hundred photos is a lot, and Mau says it’s just the tip of the iceberg — there are many, many more that didn’t make the cut when he was arranging all the images at his home, on a specially-built dining room table. These were just small versions of the final product, though. The finished photos are four-feet-square, which is large enough to see the slight variations in colour as light refracts through a cloud, or shimmers off the wing of a tiny airplane.

“Almost none of my work is in the singular,” Mau says. I’m not very good at it — the singular.”

Displayed against the airport windows, the vibrancy of the individual photos will change throughout the day, which will in turn affect the look and mood of the installation as a whole. The photos are from all over the world and taken at different times of day, which makes the overall piece more than just a picture of light; it is a view of the world and nature and life.

“It’s about light and optimism and one collective image,” Mau says. “Ultimately, what you see is an intersection of the sun’s energy with the atmosphere.”

But, he adds, “It’s not in your face about that. … It’s seeing the beauty of the environment.”